How sad! He had his whole life ahead of him, and now the young teenager has to go to court to clear his name, lest he be sent to jail and then branded a sex offender for the rest of his life. (More about this here.)

Some good ole' Republican law-and-order here! Good for those hard-working Orlando cops that they caught this horrible monster!

A legal system cannot demand the faith and fealty of the governed when rules are seen as arbitrary and deceptive. Our leaders have led us... to a crisis of faith where citizens no longer believe that laws have any determinant meaning. It is politics, not the law, that appears to drive outcomes — a self-destructive trend for a nation supposedly defined by the rule of law.

So what was the deal? Is Brazil really that bad, or did they get put off their game by the fast-paced, swarming style from the NK side? I guess no one told the North Koreans that they were supposed to roll over.

Maicon's run was perfectly timed, but I was sure he was going to run out of real estate when he laced the ball into the net. Brilliant goal.

It's not like I thought that NK had a chance against Brazil, but if they can play like that again, they might take a win from Portugal.

Anyway.. I had a good time driving my dad.. for about seven hours.. he drove the rest.

I caught a sign in PA that said "where is the birth certificate?".. We both happen to see it and when I finally did a half hearted ha ha (because I didn't get it right away) my father asked me what do you think?

..he eventually told me about what he calls the "American Concupiscence of Obama".

and of course he told me ther is a price to pay for that kind of thing.

He told me that "codicia" (lust) is not only a material, nor only a sexual mater the way people like to pretend.

He said that any object of desire that is able to overcome fears, it is a (for lack of a better explanation) godlike.

According to my father.. the seemingly "impossibility" of Obama becoming president played right into his theme of "hope and change".. So that when it did happened (he became president) people assigned to it a divine like experience/intervention.. and now with the spill he is (unlike Bush) "uniquely qualified" to stop it.. or everything they believed is in jeopardy.

If people blame Obama.. in their minds (says my father) they might as well blame themselves.. specially if they voted for him (i said) ... and my father said after a pause that seemed jarring dislocated.. my father voted for Obama.

I didn't react to that.. (thank God) It would have been disrespectful to him.. the fact that he told me it was not so as to give me an opportunity to call it into question. I think it it was more to brace waht he had been telling me about.. "The American Concupiscence of Obama" had been real enough to carry him away like a Hoover Dam Relief.

Re Jerry Brown: What a fool he was to be a lifelong politician, expressing opinions in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 00s, as well as in the 90s. Why could he not be smart, like Whitman and Fiorina, and keep his trap shut for decades, till he decided to enter politics at the highest level?

I'm still waiting for those who criticized Obama for his light resume to criticize Whitman and Fiorina's presumption for wanting to start at the top.

The reason this flower looks like a painting is because it lacks something that -- ironically -- I would put in if I were doing a painting of it. There are no black/gray shadowy areas demarcating the depths of the folds. It's just more orange. It's not what the brain thinks will be there, but it's what the camera sees.

for all we know, Whitman and Fiorina held identical views to Brown's in 1995.

By that same logic, Whitman and Fiorina both may very well have been killer vampire ninjas in 1995, "for all we know." Brown might easily have been battening, on the sly, on the covertly harvested endocrinal fluids of small, stray Filipina orphans, "for all we know."

What we absolutely, unquestionably DO know, however, is that Jerry Brown did state, verbatim: "We need more welfare and fewer jobs."

It's perfectly okay by me if you have no particularly substantive opinion on this specific utterance, either way; this isn't a test, and you're not being graded -- certainly not by me!

I'm simply inquiring as to why -- if that is, indeed, the case -- you're bothering to respond to it at all, really.

I want to thank our host Ann Althouse for a blog that is perfectly arranged. It is a place where interesting topics in difficult areas are discussed at length. It is such a pleasure reading your blog and all the comments.

The stark reality of how progressive an idea of a blog is hit me when I visited the main page of the newspaper in my major city. The writers came across as fools - dull and missing the point. That is what I love about this place. You may disagree, but we understand the point that needs to be discussed. AA is raising the bar of expectations for many people. Thanks.

"In making the suspension recommendation, Lisa Cornish, UC Irvine’s director of student housing, found that the Muslim Student Union had 'planned, orchestrated and coordinated in advance' an effort to disrupt a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on Feb. 8 about U.S.-Israeli relations. The recommendation was made in late May but not made public at that time.

"Oren was shouted down repeatedly by Muslim students who stood up and delivered statements such as 'Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech.' Supporters cheered as the students were escorted away by police, and each time Oren attempted to resume his speech, another student jumped up with another outburst."

Pffftt. Doubling down on an already failed gambit simply makes you twice as spectacularly spastic a loser, ultimately. In Vegas, the suckers perennially prone to such sad, desperate displays are routinely referred to as "fish."